Okay, let's begin..
Exercise 1: Minature SokobanLevel design as an activity can be considered to be primarily about building bigger structures from smaller ideas. From the base elements of the world (floor, wall, space, mechanics) you can build little sections, the little sections build up to screens, and the screens build up to levels. For the first exercise I think we should concentrate on the 'little sections'.
What I mean by 'little sections' varies a lot game-to-game, or genre-to-genre. In a platform game a section would be a single jump over a pit, or a short encounter with an enemy. In a 'classic' scrolling-shooter it would be a solitary chain of enemies. In a puzzle game it is an individual problem that must be solved along the way.
Concentrating on the atomic elements of level design opens us up to the full range of possibilities that the games mechanics allow. By deconstucting the game we gain a solid base that we can work from. It's also a great acid test to check that the games mechanics are interesting and/or fun. In other words it's a pretty great place to start.
Sokoban?This week, and assuming it goes well, the next will be based on Sokoban. I've chosen this game because:
- It has very simple mechanics.
- You are probably familiar with it.
- I think there's a good chance you've not made levels for it before.
In case you aren't familiar with sokoban the basic concept is you need to move every boulder in each puzzle to a goal square. Typicaly there's one and only one goal square per boulder. The puzzles come from the difficulty of navigating the player into the right positions to move the boulders towards the goal.
There's plenty of other info online a search away if you need to know more.
The TaskOkay, so the actual task. We should each try and create a set (aim for 10ish) of really tiny sokoban levels. In each aim and make the puzzle contained as self-contained as possible, and try to cut out absolutely every bit that isn't strictly required.
To get across just how simple to start things
this is my first 'puzzle' of my set.
Whilst each puzzle should be as simple as possible they should also be distinct. Each puzzle should have a different solution to the others. They'll probably get a bit more complicated as they go on, and that's fine, but try and get the most basic pieces nailed first.
What to make them in?I've put together a little flash game/editor that you can use (but don't feel oblidged to, there's plenty of other sokoban implementations out there that allow custom levels).
http://jonathanwhiting.com/coding/ldw/sokoban.swfThere is a tile palette at the bottom to select tiles, you can also use number keys. Click in the main area to place tiles. In the bottom right there are two buttons, the left hand toggles between editing and testing, the right hand puts a url containing the level into the clipboard, so you can paste it somewhere,
like here. Though I'd probably recommend posting them all at once, rather than one at a time or it might get a bit spammy in here.
Credit where it's due..I got the idea of minature sokoban levels from David W. Skinner's
excellent Microban sets. It's probably best if you don't check them out until you're done with the exercise though, I think there's a lot of value in going through the steps yourself. For the same reason I'm not going to share my set just yet.
Anyway, I hope you all get on with it okay, and hopefully get something out of it too. Do yell if there's anything unclear, my flash tool is confusing/rubbish or whatever else. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you all come up with
Developer
